


The Fire Inside

by nwhepcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's not feeling so great. He'd be the last person on earth to guess what's wrong with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fire Inside

Pulling hard against the wind, Dean yanks the shop door shut behind him. “Man!” he says to Sam. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there.”

Sam spears him with a Look, as does a woman who’s clutching her purchase and a furry hat with ear flaps. 

“Sorry for the language, ma’am,” Dean says, which only seems to deepen her scowl. “Bundle up, it’s brutal out there.”

“She probably knows that,” Sam points out after the door has slammed shut on another ball-freezing blast. “Unless she teleported here.”

“Oh, shut up,” Dean mutters.

“Cold enough for ya?” says the man behind the counter. 

That’s original, Dean thinks. He says, “I dunno, but I saw a brass monkey outside, and he was searching for something.”

Sam gives him another Look, and Dean yelps, “ _What?_ ”

“Hey, that’s a good one,” the guy says. 

While Sam pumps him for local gossip about weird occurrences south of town, Dean wanders over to the cast iron woodstove and holds his hands close to its surface. Sammy gives him shit for never wearing gloves, but he _hates_ wearing gloves. Dean’s thighs feel scorching hot after a moment or two, but his ass is still freezing. He turns his backside to the stove, and alternates between freezing ass or pecker until Sam finally approaches. 

“You ready?”

“Goin’ back out there? Hold me back.”

***

Shedding his jacket in the motel room, Dean stomps his feet and claps his hands on his upper arms. “Hey. I think maybe they fixed the heat in here.”

Sam clomps his massive feet behind Dean. “You’ll have to give me a minute to tell.”

Dean peels off his outer shirt, then goes for the mini-fridge and opens a beer. “Sammy?”

“No thanks. A frosty one isn’t exactly on my must-have list right now.” Frowning, he watches as Dean switches hands with the beer and puts his right hand against his face. 

A moment later, Dean’s pulling at the neck of his tee, flapping it out from his body. “All right, I know I said I dreamed of a hunt in the Mojave, but this is a little ridiculous.” Shambling over to the heater, he flips its control panel cover open.

“Don’t touch that!” Sam blurts. 

“What the hell is your deal? I’m gonna turn this down a little.”

“Dean, it’s not even _doing_ anything.”

“Bullshit,” Dean says. “I’m sweating here.”

“And I’m freezing. Leave it alone.”

“Something’s wrong with you, then, because it’s fuckin’ broiling in here.” Yanking off his tee, he starts in on his belt buckle.

“I thought we were researching,” Sam says in an amused tone of voice.

“Laugh it up, bitch. You can do it all yourself, if that’s how you want to be.”

No sooner does Dean get out of his pants than he feels cold air on his sweat-dampened skin. “Fuck!” he mutters, and starts dressing again. 

Dragging his gaze away from the laptop screen, Sam asks, “What, exactly, was that?” 

“I dunno. I was roasting, and now I’m cold.”

“Anything else going on? Scratchy throat, sniffles?”

Shaking his head emphatically, Dean says, “Look, can we order in a pizza tonight? Damned if I’m going out there again unless it’s to kill something.”

***

It’s around three a.m. when Dean makes one last swipe at his armpits with the hand towel,. Tossing it on the floor, he pulls on a fresh tee shirt, then climbs back into bed with Sam.

Sam comes up out of sleep, flailing and making incoherent sounds. “Relax, dude, it’s just me.”

Fumbling a hand across the bed, Sam pats at the pillow until he finds Dean’s head full of wet hair.

“You take a shower?”

“Nah. Just got hot.”

Sliding toward him, Sam slips his arm around Dean’s waist and draws him close.

“Please, no, Sammy. I’m too hot to make out.”

Sam plants a brief kiss onto Dean’s shoulder, then rolls away. “Night, then.”

“You too.”

***

It’s less than an hour later when Dean flings the covers onto the floor, stumbling over them as he launches himself off the bed.

“Aaaaahhhhh!” Sam shrieks at the sudden cold. “What is it?” He switches the bedside light on.

“I’m hot! Shit! Why can’t the fucking heater find a spot in the middle and stay there?”

“You’re crazy. It’s just as cold as it was before.” Sam grabs up the covers and starts spreading them back over the bed.

“I’m burning up, Sam.” He’s flapping his tee again, gulping air. 

“Come here.” Sam approaches Dean instead, pressing his palm against Dean’s forehead. “Wow, you’re sweaty.” Wiping his hand on the sheet, he makes another attempt. “Are you feeling any worse than before?”

Dean shakes his head against Sam’s hand. “I swear.”

“Well, you don’t feel a lot hotter than usual. We’ll see how you are in the morning.”

***

The temperature torture keeps on throughout the next day. Dean’s beginning to believe maybe he is coming down with something, because he keeps feeling sick and lightheaded, in this vague, difficult way to describe. Usually a few minutes after the feeling of grossness comes over him, it gets hotter than hell in the car, or in a diner, or in his jacket. They manage to put down the spirit they were hunting, but as soon as it’s sending up smoke signals from its grave, Dean reels, face flushed.

Sam grips his shoulder, steadying him. “You need a doctor.”

Dean scowls. “I’m just fighting something off. Let’s get this fucking thing taken care of, and get on the road.”

“I think you should lie low a few days, and see if this goes away.”

“ _Hell_ no. I want to get to the roadhouse. Ellen’s got a line on a hunt. Jesus!” Pulling his jacket off, he tosses it onto the Impala and gets shoveling dirt back into the grave.

***

Taking a road trip with whatever’s got him is a new and special brand of misery. He drives without his coat and leaves the heat at the lowest possible level that doesn’t cause an eruption from Sam. Opening his window all the way, though, does get a rise out of Sam.

“Goddammit, I’m trying to be sympathetic here, but you’re freezing me to death! Stop the car and roll in the snow for all I care, but stop trying to turn me into a popsicle!”

“Jesus, Sam. Sorry to put you out but I’m feeling crappy here. My head is swimming.”

“Then you shouldn’t be driving, should you?”

“Asshole.”

“Pull over, and let’s switch.”

Though Dean wants to argue, he feels just shitty enough that he knows it’s stupid to drive. If he wrecked his baby out of sheer stubborn idiocy, he’d never forgive himself. Pulling off on a wide spot in the road, he steps out of the car and stands at the edge of a culvert, breathing in the cold air. It’s disorienting as hell when a stream of cows, not water, comes out of the culvert, emerging below his feet. “Cows,” Dean says stupidly, swaying at the edge of the dropoff. “In the drainpipe.”

Sam grabs him by the upper arms, steadying him, pulling Dean against his ridiculously muscled chest. “It’s not a drainpipe, it’s a passage. So they don’t have to cross the road to get from the pasture to the barn.”

Dean’s legs wobble as Sam leads him back to the car. 

“This is getting me worried, Dean. Let’s find the closest town with a doc-in-the-box and get this checked out.”

“I’m okay!” Dean snaps. “Now lay off.”

***

Dean goes through so many tee shirts that they stop at a thrift store to pick up some cheap extras. Dean just trashes the crappier ones he peels off, rather than carry a duffle of wet clothes until they feel like stopping to do laundry. A couple of times when they stop for gas, Sam finds him leaning into the beer cooler, eyes closed in contentment. That’s when he’s not reacting to the cold inside the Impala once the flush fades from his face. 

Sam insists on stopping for the night, even though they could make it to Ellen’s by dawn if they push on through. 

“This is ridiculous, Sam. I feel fine.”

“You feel fine right now. You go 24 hours without an episode, and I’ll believe you’re over whatever this is.”

It’s impossible to argue with his logic, though he wants to. Instead he waits in the Impala’s shotgun seat as Sam gets them a room. As he slings his duffel onto one of the beds, Sam asks, “Pizza or Chinese?”

“Chinese,” he says. “You pick.” 

Sammy puts in the order while Dean takes a leak and washes up. When Dean emerges from the can, Sam reaches for him, feeling his forehead. “I’m fine,” he says in half-hearted protest as he leans into Sam. 

Sam gets it, knows that hand-on-the-forehead bit kicks off a nostalgia for their mom. It’s one of the memories he has but Sam doesn’t, that tender, competent touch that made him feel safe. It’s probably almost as fucked up that he and Sam have this as the other things they share, but Dean doesn’t care at the moment. He allows himself the comfort of Sam’s arms and steady breathing, and that’s how he realizes that this weird fever is stressing him the fuck out.

It’s not until they’re halfway through the Chinese food that Dean has a relapse, but it’s a monster. No symptoms of nausea or lightheadedness, just a sudden slam from all’s-right-in-his-world to flames licking at every nerve ending.

“Sonofabitch!” he says around a mouthful of Szechuan beef. 

“Dude, your _eyelids_ are sweating.”

***

The next one comes on in his sleep, as he and Sam lay with their limbs all tangled together. By the time he bolts awake, he and Sam and the sheets are drenched. 

“The hell, Dean?” Sam mutters with righteous but sleepy indignation, as if he believes this is the first shot fired in a prank war. “I’m fucking soaked.”

“Welcome to the club, Sammy.” He stumbles out of bed and drags the duffels off the other bed. “C’mon, we’ll just switch beds.” 

Tossing Sam the clean towel he’d left by his side of the bed, Dean heads for the bathroom to grab one for himself. 

“This is bad, Dean,” Sam informs him when he returns, scrubbing the towel over his wet hair. 

“Yeah no shit.”

“No, I mean night sweats like this, they’re nothing to screw around with. It could be a symptom of TB, pneumonia, cancer, even AIDS. It’s possibly serious.” Somebody’s been sneaking in some research, apparently.

Dean ticks off one-two-three-four on his fingers. “I’m not coughing. I’m not coughing. The life I lead, cancer’s not going to be what gets me. And you’re the only one with access to my sweet, sweet ass, and you’re clean.”

“Or it could be a drop in your testosterone levels.”

“All right,” Dean says. “I’ll see somebody. But we might as well wait until we get to Ellen’s. She’ll know somebody local, someone she likes.”

***

Bored out of his mind in the passenger seat, Dean starts counting the mini-fevers. He’s past a dozen by the time they roll into the roadhouse’s parking lot. By this time, he’s simultaneously craving a burger and fries and grossed out by the idea of eating at all.

He’s a little unsteady when he walks into the dim barroom. Sam herds him to a booth and settles him in, then saunters over to the bar, leaning on it as he talks with Ellen. She casts a look up and across at Dean, who offers a little salute. After a moment, she sets a beer in front of Sam at the bar and walks one over to Dean, along with one for herself. She sits in the other side of the booth.

“Hey,” she says quietly.

“Hey, Ellen.”

“Sam says you’ve been feeling kind of rough.”

“It’s no big thing,” he says automatically, despite the fact that they planned to ask her for the name of a doctor. Instinct is sometimes stupid, for all Dean relies on it. 

“Uh-huh,” Ellen says dryly, which makes him grin. 

“Yeah, okay, I feel like crap. Some of the time. We thought you might know a doctor.”

“Sam says it’s a fever that comes and goes.”

Dean sips his beer. “Kind of. I’m not sure if it’s an actual fever temperaturewise, but I’ll go from normal to blazing to freezing. Sometimes it comes on without warning, but sometimes I feel like crap for a few minutes before.”

“Like crap how?”

“Kinda sick to my stomach, kinda lightheaded. Woozy. I can’t even sleep through the night -- I’m up two and three times a night, minimum, waking up on fucking fire.”

Ellen’s lips quirk oddly, but all she says is, “How long do these episodes last?”

Dean huffs out a breath. “Get out your stopwatch and let’s see.” Eyes closed, he grabs at his shirt and flaps it in and out, trying to fan a little air against his blazing skin.

Reaching across the table, Ellen feels his forehead as sweat beads on his lip and the back of his neck. “Oh, honey,” she says, and there’s a weird combination of sympathy and amusement in her voice. 

He hears Sam’s bootheels on the hardwood, and then his voice: “He’s having another attack?”

“Yeah,” Ellen says. “It’s not a doctor he needs. Maybe a witch doctor.”

“What?” Dean blurts. 

“Honey, what you’ve got --” she laughs that smoky laugh that gets to Dean, at least when he’s not feeling like burning toast. “What you’ve got is hot flashes.”

“Oh, that’s hilarious, Ellen. Y’know, I came here for help, not to have you give me shit.”

“I’m not fucking around with you, Dean. I woke up twice last night myself, same thing. It’s wet tee-shirt night pretty much every night at the roadhouse, if you catch my drift.”

“Seriously? They feel this shitty?”

“Hell, yeah. What’d you do, Dean, go and piss off some witch?”

“We haven’t seen a witch in months, Ellen,” Sam says. 

“That you know of.”

“How do I get rid of this?” Dean cuts in.

“You could try black cohosh. Or you could think about women you’ve run across who might be witches and might be pissed, then maybe go back and beg for forgiveness.” 

Dean sneers. “Yeah, right. How long do these last, anyway?”

“Could be years,” Ellen says, and then cackles in what can only be glee. “Oh, god, wait till I tell Jo.”

‘I will shoot you if you do, Ellen Harvelle.”

“Christ!” Sam says. “Back in Vermont.”

“What?”

“’Colder than a witch’s tit.’ Remember the look you got?”

“Well, she certainly proved they’re warmer than you think,” Ellen says. “Maybe she’ll let you off with a week or two.”

Draining his beer and setting the glass down, Dean says, “You think?”

“She might,” Ellen says. “Or she might’ve figured out some way to transfer her hot flashes to you. In which case, you’ve got ‘em until you don’t.”

“Is this gonna kill --” He never blushes, but he is now, and it’s not a flash.

“Your sex life?”

A shoots a sidelong glance at Sam. “Yeah.”

Her laugh is startlingly loud and full.

“That’s a yes?” he asks miserably.

“That’s a big fat no, babe. Trust me.”

Well, that’s something.

“They won’t kill you, Dean. Hundreds of millions of women have ‘em every day, and we soldier on.”

There’s not a chance in hell Dean’s going to have Ellen show him up in the physical toughness department. “Then I can too,” he says. Which is the perfect time for another tidal wave of superheated blood to roar through his veins. “ _Sonofabitch._ ” He wipes his face with the tail of his shirt. “So. you’ve got a line on a job for us.”

“Don’t you two have a job in Vermont?”

Sam gives Dean a look that’s too damn dimpled for his own good. “Yeah,” Sammy says. “Yeah, we do.”


End file.
